Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/216

 meant extinction of Ruth as Cynthia Gail; meant annihilation of her projects and her plans; meant, perhaps, destruction of her even as Ruth Alden.

Ruth had not ceased to realize, during the tremendous events of these last weeks, that at any moment someone might appear to betray her; and she had kept some calculation of the probable consequence. When she had first embraced this wild enterprise, which fate had seemed to proffer, she had entered upon considerable risks; if caught, she would have the difficult burden of proof, when she was taking the enemy's money and using a passport supplied by the enemy and following—outwardly, at least—the enemy's instructions, that she was not actually acting for the enemy. But if she had been betrayed during the first days, it would have been possible to show how the true Cynthia Gail met her death and to show that she—Ruth Alden—could have had no hand in that. But now more than two months had passed since that day in Chicago when Ruth Alden took on her present identity—more than two months since the body of Cynthia Gail, still unrecognized, must have been cremated or laid away in some nameless grave. Therefore, the former possibility no longer existed.

Horror at her position, if she suddenly faced one of Cynthia Gail's family, sometimes startled Ruth up wide-awake in bed at night. She had not been able to think what to do in such case as that; her mind had simply balked before it; and every added week with its letters subscribed by those forged "Thias" to Cynthia's father, and those intimate endearments to Cynthia's mother, and those letters about love to George Byrne—well, every